


Floating Away

by seasalticecream32



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Boggarts, Drug Use, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 04:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4774316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasalticecream32/pseuds/seasalticecream32
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin just wants to be timeless, to float away protected from his worries and his woes. The boggart he's been neglecting for a week is insisting on being dealt with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floating Away

**Float Away**

_An HP AU type you guys probably aren’t used to._

Merlin laid back and floated.

He could see the world in a far off kind of way. Everything was soft at the edges, no harsh lines or solid colors.

It all blurred.

One color blended into the other, the textures all melted away, time slowed and slid and slipped into nothing. Merlin’s bones buzzed, his skin zapping and humming with something almost like pleasure. It warmed his blood and cooled his breath and he let himself give in to it.

He didn’t have to care about the faces that swam behind his eyes. He didn’t have to touch or feel the memories. He was safe, here, in this bubble of pleasure and comfort and timelessness.

Timelessness was his favorite part.

He was just closing his eyes to imagine a hand, anyone’s hands from all those hundreds of years ago, when he heard the cabinet break.

He was supposed to have dealt with that weeks ago.

He tried to ignore it, but a boggart in the house really crashed the _timelessness_. It weighted him down with its insistence on grabbing his attention. It was howling and crashing into things, throwing it’s fit for him to look at it.

It just wanted a little bit of power and he’d just wanted a little bit of rest and it was cutting through the pleasant buzzing in his bones and replaced it with horrible boggart screeching.

He growled when his haze turned to fog and his mind tried to focus on the sounds the boggart was making.

Why couldn’t he have this? Just this? Just a moment.

He sat up and steadied himself with one hand, waiting until the room stopped spinning and the nausea receded. Everything tasted like medicine and sour.

He wiped his mouth hand stood and blinked away the sludge in his brain.

He didn’t remember buying a mirror.

He’d refused to replace the last one after it had ended up broken and outside in one of his magic fits.

He reached up to the cracks on his lips and winced at the pain, furrowing his brow.

There were scars he barely remembered. Red crusted against his cheek from a fall or a fight, the details were fuzzy at the moment. Merlin tried to concentrate on the reflection, tried to understand why it looked wrong, why it bothered him.

The longer he looked at it and it looked at him, the less he understood. He watched scars stitch back into smooth skin, sunken eyes fill back with light and liquid blue. He saw cracked lips soften, plump and smooth and smiling again. He didn’t feel himself smiling. Nothing was in focus except for this version of him that was so much better and yet all wrong.

He didn’t feel any of these things, hadn’t felt so healed and complete in ages.

He reached out, surprised to feel his fingers clutch onto a red scarf and rough blue shirt, surprised to feel his skin brush against his own skin.

He collapsed when he realized, too slowly and all at once, that it was him.

He was standing in front of him, the boy full of hopes from a thousand years ago. From before even that. The boy who had still believed.

That belief was gone.

Lost to years of timelessness.

 


End file.
